Weekly Thoughts

Like many readers, we spent a good amount of time this week closely tracking pivotal news cycles and just had to chime in with our thoughts.  Yes, we are talking about Pinkfong’s “Baby Shark” becoming the most-watched video ever on YouTube, racking in 7.043 billion views (that’s billion with a “B”, folks).  As the BBC points out, this means Baby Shark has been streamed continuously for 30,187 years – a number, which, for parents with young children, sounds exactly right.  For those unfamiliar, Baby Shark is an amazingly catchy children’s rhyme, with origins tracing back to US summer camps. If you have not heard it, you’re welcome:

This all started in 2015, when Pinkfong, a South Korean education company, uploaded this catchy version to YouTube.  Now, there are a lot of catchy songs, but this one had a relatively slow trajectory to success.  The BBC outlines the video’s rise in popularity:

“But none of them could match the phenomenal success of Pinkfong’s interpretation, which was sung by 10-year-old Korean-American singer Hope Segoine and uploaded to YouTube in 2015. It’s addictive “doo doo doo doo doo doo” hook and fishy dance moves became a craze in South Korea, where popular bands like Red Velvet, Girls’ Generation and Blackpink started incorporating it into their concerts. The following June, Pinkfong put out a second video, titled Baby Shark Dance, featuring two cute kids performing the dance routine. That clip that inspired the hashtag #BabySharkChallenge – with everyone from Indonesian farmworkers to pop stars Cardi B and Josh Groban joining the fun. The song is catnip for children, whose appetite for repetition has undoubtedly helped it climb the ranks of YouTube’s most-watched videos.”

In April 2019, Baby Shark “only” had 2.5 billion views, which means viewership has increased 181% since then.  Our guess is that when the pandemic hit, parents let kids watch Baby Shark on repeat to their heart’s desire, and here we are, with no end in sight.  Baby Shark for the win, we suppose.

Apart from the comfort of knowing other parents have also been a little looser with their kids streaming habits recently, learning about Baby Shark’s popularity is interesting to Chenmark because it shows how one can have success off the beaten path – in this case, in children’s music rather than more mainstream music.  It is not exactly unprecedented either: children’s songs hold four of YouTube’s top ten most-watched videos.

Similarly, few would guess that the world’s best-selling living author (and the fourth best-selling author of all-time) is Danielle Steel, who writes romance novels – a category easy to eschew.  These examples just go to show what is possible if you are willing to go where others won’t – something near and dear to our heart at Chenmark.  We are a long way from the small business equivalent of one billion YouTube views, but the momentum is building.